From February 1998, Dodi's father, Mohamed Al-Fayed (the owner of the Hôtel Ritz, for which Paul worked) claimed that the crash was a result of a conspiracy,[4] and later contended that the crash was orchestrated by MI6 on the instructions of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.[5] His claims that the crash was a result of a conspiracy were dismissed by a French judicial investigation[2] and by Operation Paget, a Metropolitan police inquiry that concluded in 2006.[6]
An inquest headed by LJ Scott Baker into the deaths of Diana and Dodi began at the Royal Courts of Justice, London, on 2 October 2007 and was a continuation of the original inquest that began in 2004.[7] On 7 April 2008, the jury released an official statement that Diana and Dodi were unlawfully killed by the grossly negligent driving of chauffeur Henri Paul and the paparazzi.[8] Though the official verdict implicated the pursuing vehicles, the jury also named the intoxication of the driver and the victims' decisions to not wear seat-belts as contributing factors to their deaths. Additionally, the Mercedes had been traveling at over twice the legal speed limit of that particular section of road and had long since left the paparazzi vehicles far behind by the time the accident occurred.[9]
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Circumstances
On 30 August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, arrived in Paris, France, with Dodi Fayed, the son of Mohamed al-Fayed. They had stopped there en route to London, having spent the preceding nine days together on board Mohamed al-Fayed’s yacht, the ‘Jonikal’, on the French and Italian Riviera. They had intended to stay overnight. Mohamed al-Fayed was and is the owner of the Hôtel Ritz Paris. He also owned an apartment in Rue Arsène Houssaye, a short distance from the hotel and located just off the Avenue des Champs Elysées.Henri Paul, the Acting Head of Security at the Ritz Hotel, had been instructed to drive the hired black 1994 Mercedes-Benz S280 through Paris in order to elude the paparazzi.[10] A decoy vehicle left the Ritz first, attracting a throng of photographers. Diana and Fayed would then depart from the hotel's rear entrance.
At around 12:20 a.m. on 31 August 1997, Diana and Fayed left the Ritz to return to the apartment in rue Arsène Houssaye. They were the rear passengers in a black Mercedes-Benz S280, registration number "688 LTV 75", driven by Paul. Trevor Rees-Jones, a member of the Fayed family's personal protection team, was in the front passenger seat.
They left from the rear of the hotel, the Rue Cambon exit. After crossing the Place de la Concorde they drove along Cours la Reine and Cours Albert 1er (the embankment road running parallel to the River Seine) into the Place de l’Alma underpass. At around 12:23 a.m. at the entrance to the tunnel, their driver lost control; the car swerved to the left of the two-lane carriageway before colliding head-on with the thirteenth pillar supporting the roof at an estimated speed of 105 km/h (65 mph).[11] It then spun and hit the stone wall of the tunnel backwards, finally coming to a stop. The impact of the crash reduced the car to a pile of wreckage. There was (and still) no guard rail between the pillars to prevent this. The Place de l'Alma underpass is the only one on that embankment road that has roof supporting pillars.
As the victims lay in the wrecked car, the photographers continued to take pictures. Critically injured, Diana was reported to repeatedly murmur "oh my God," and, after the photographers were pushed away by emergency teams, "leave me alone".[12]
Dodi Fayed had been sitting in the left rear passenger seat and appeared to be dead. Nevertheless, fire officers were still trying to resuscitate him when he was pronounced dead by a doctor at 1:32 a.m.; Henri Paul was declared dead on removal from the wreckage. Both were taken directly to the Institut Médico-Légal (IML), the Paris mortuary, not to a hospital. Autopsy examination concluded that Paul and Fayed had both suffered a rupture in the isthmus of the aorta and a fractured spine, with, in the case of Paul, a medullar section in the dorsal region and in the case of Fayed a medullar section in the cervical region.
Still conscious, Rees-Jones had suffered multiple serious facial injuries. The two forward passengers' airbags had functioned normally. None of the car's occupants were wearing seat belts.
Diana, who had been sitting in the rear right passenger seat, was still conscious. It was first reported that she was crouched on the floor of the vehicle with her back to the road. It was also reported that a paparazzo who saw Diana described her as bleeding from the nose and ears with her head rested on the back of the front passenger's seat; he tried to remove her from the car but her feet were stuck. Then he told her that help was on the way and to stay awake; there was no answer from Diana, just blinking.
In June 2007 the Channel 4 documentary Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel claimed that the first person to touch Diana was Dr. Maillez,[13] who chanced upon the scene. He reported that Diana had no visible injuries but was in shock and he supplied her with oxygen.
The first police patrol officers arrived at the scene at 12.30. Shortly afterwards, the seven paparazzi on the scene were arrested. Diana was removed from the car at 1:00 a.m. She then went into cardiac arrest. Following external cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Diana’s heart started beating again. She was moved to the SAMU ambulance at 1:18 a.m. The ambulance departed the crash scene at 1:41 a.m. and arrived at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital at 2:06 a.m.[14] Despite attempts to save her, her internal injuries were too extensive: her heart had been displaced from the left to the right side of the chest, which tore the pulmonary vein and the pericardium. Despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage, she died at 4 a.m.[15] At 5:30, her death was announced at a press conference held by a hospital doctor; Jean-Pierre Chevènement, France's Interior Minister; and Sir Michael Jay, Britain's ambassador to France.
Many have speculated that if Diana had worn a seat belt, her injuries would have been less severe.[16] Initial media reports stated that Trevor Rees-Jones was the only car occupant to have worn a seat belt. These reports proved incorrect, as both the French and British investigations concluded that none of the occupants of the car was wearing a seat belt at the time of the impact.[N 1][N 2]
Later that morning, Chevènement, together with French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Bernadette Chirac (the wife of the then French President, Jacques Chirac), and Bernard Kouchner (French Health Minister), visited the hospital room where Diana's body lay and paid their last respects. After their visits, the Anglican Archdeacon of France, Father Martin Draper, said commendatory prayers from the Book of Common Prayer.
At around 2:00 p.m., Diana's former husband, Prince Charles, and two older sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, arrived in Paris; they left with her body ninety minutes later.
Subsequent events
Initial media reports stated Diana's car had collided with the pillar at 190 km/h (120 mph), and that the speedometer's needle had jammed at that position. It was later announced the car's actual speed on collision was about 95–110 km/h (60–70 mph), and that the speedometer had no needle as it was digital; this conflicts with the list of available equipment and features of the Mercedes-Benz W140 S-Class, which used a computer-controlled analogue speedometer, with no digital readout for speed. The car was certainly travelling much faster than the legal speed limit of 50 km/h (31 mph), and faster than was prudent for the Alma underpass. In 1999, a French investigation concluded the Mercedes had come into contact with another vehicle (a white Fiat Uno) in the tunnel. The driver of that vehicle has never come forward, and the vehicle itself has not officially been identified.An eighteen-month French judicial investigation concluded in 1999 that the car crash that killed Diana was caused by Paul, who lost control of the car at high speed while intoxicated.[19]
In October 2003, the Daily Mirror published a letter from Diana in which, ten months before her death, she wrote about a possible plot to kill her by tampering with the brakes of her car. “This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous.” She said “my husband[20] is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry”.[21]
On 6 January 2004, six years after her death, an inquest into the deaths of Diana and Dodi Fayed opened in London held by Michael Burgess, the coroner of the Queen's household. The coroner asked the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, to make inquiries, in response to speculation (see below) that the deaths were not an accident. The Metropolitan Police investigation reported their findings in Operation Paget in December 2006.
Later in 2004, US TV network CBS showed pictures of the crash scene showing an intact rear side and an intact centre section of the Mercedes, including one of an unbloodied Diana with no outward injuries, crouched on the rear floor of the vehicle with her back to the right passenger seat—the right rear car door is completely opened. The release of these pictures caused uproar in the UK, where it was widely felt that the privacy of Diana was being infringed, and spurred another lawsuit by Mohammed al-Fayed.[22]
In January 2006, Lord Stevens explained in an interview on GMTV that the case is substantially more complex than once thought. The Sunday Times wrote on 29 January 2006 that agents of the British secret service were cross-examined, because they were in Paris at the time of the accident. It was suggested in many journals that these agents might have exchanged the blood test of the driver with another blood sample (although no evidence for this has ever been forthcoming).[23][24]
On 13 July 2006, the Italian magazine Chi published a photograph showing Diana in her "last moments" despite an unofficial blackout on such photographs being published. The photograph was taken shortly after the crash, and shows the Princess slumped in the back seat while a paramedic attempts to fit an oxygen mask over her face. This photograph was also published in other Italian and Spanish magazines and newspapers.
The editor of Chi defended his decision by saying he published the photographs taken from the French investigation dossier for the "simple reason that they haven't been seen before" and that he felt the images do not disrespect the memory of the former Princess.[25]
Funeral
Main article: Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana's death was met with extraordinary public expressions of grief, and her public funeral at Westminster Abbey on 6 September drew an estimated 3 million[26] mourners and onlookers in London, as well as worldwide television coverage, which overshadowed the news of the death the previous day of Mother Teresa.Members of the public were invited to sign a book of condolence at St James Palace. Throughout the night members of the Women's Royal Voluntary Service and the Salvation Army combined to provide support for people queuing along the Mall.[27] More than one million bouquets were left at her London home, Kensington Palace, while at her family's estate of Althorp the public was asked to stop bringing flowers, as the volume of people and flowers in the surrounding roads was said to be causing a threat to public safety.
By 10 September, the pile of flowers outside Kensington Gardens was 1.5 metres deep in places and the bottom layer had started to compost.[28] The people were quiet, waiting patiently in line to sign the book and leave their gifts. There were a few minor incidents. Fabio Piras, a Sardinian tourist, was given a one-week prison sentence on 10 September for having taken a teddy bear from the pile. When the sentence was later reduced to a £100 fine, Piras was punched in the face by a member of the public when he left the court.[29] The next day, Maria Rigociova, a 54-year-old secondary school teacher, and Agnesa Sihelska, a 50-year-old communications technician, were each given a 28-day jail sentence for having taken eleven teddy bears and a number of flowers from the pile outside St. James' Palace.[30] This too was later reduced to a fine (of £200 each) after they had spent two nights in jail.
Some criticised the reaction to Diana's death at the time as being "hysterical" and "irrational". As early as 1998 philosopher Anthony O'Hear identified the mourning as a defining point in the "sentimentalisation of Britain", a media-fuelled phenomenon where image and reality become blurred.[31] These criticisms that were repeated on the 10th anniversary, where journalist Jonathan Freedland expressed the opinion that "It has become an embarrassing memory, like a mawkish, self-pitying teenage entry in a diary,... we cringe to think about it." Some cultural analysts disagreed. Sociologist Deborah Steinberg pointed out that many Britons associated Diana not with the Royal Family but with social change and a more liberal society: "I don't think it was hysteria, the loss of a public figure can be a touchstone for other issues."[32]
Reactions
Royal family
The reaction of the Royal Family to Diana's death caused unprecedented resentment and outcry. They were on their summer residence at Balmoral Castle, and their initial decision not to return to London or to mourn more publicly was much criticised at the time. Their rigid adherence to protocol, and their concern to care for Diana's grieving sons, was interpreted by some[specify] as a lack of compassion.In particular, the refusal of Buckingham Palace to fly the Royal Standard at half-mast provoked angry headlines in newspapers.[33] "Where is our Queen? Where is her Flag?" asked The Sun. The Palace's stance was one of royal protocol: no flag could fly over Buckingham Palace, as the Royal Standard is only flown when the Queen is in residence, and the Queen was then in Scotland. Furthermore, the Royal Standard never flies at half-mast as it is the Sovereign's flag and there is never a dead Sovereign (the new monarch immediately succeeds his or her predecessor).
Finally, as a compromise, the Union Flag was flown instead, at half-mast, as the Queen left for Westminster Abbey on the day of Diana's funeral. This set a precedent, and Buckingham Palace has subsequently flown the Union Flag when the Queen is not in residence.
The Queen, who returned to London from Balmoral, agreed to a television broadcast to the nation.
Public reactions
Over a million people lined the four-mile (6 km) route from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey.[34] Outside the Abbey and in Hyde Park crowds watched and listened to proceedings on giant outdoor screens and huge speakers as guests filed in, including representatives of the many charities of which Diana was patron. Notable attendants included Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of U.S. President Bill Clinton; Bernadette Chirac, wife of the French President, Jacques Chirac; and other celebrities, including Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti and Diana's good friends singers George Michael and Elton John – the latter performed a rewritten version of his song, "Candle in the Wind", that was dedicated to her.[35] The service was televised live around the world.Protocol was disregarded when the guests applauded the speech by Diana's younger brother Earl Spencer, who strongly criticised the press and indirectly criticised the Royal Family for their treatment of her.[36] The funeral is estimated to have been watched by 2.5 billion worldwide.[37]
After the end of the ceremony, the coffin was driven to Althorp in a Daimler hearse.[38] Mourners cast flowers at the funeral procession for almost the entire length of its journey and vehicles even stopped on the opposite carriageway of the M1 motorway as the cars passed on the route to Althorp.[39] In a private ceremony, Diana was buried on the Althorp estate on an island in the middle of a lake. In her casket, she wears a black Catherine Walker dress and is clutching a rosary in her hands. A visitors' centre is open during summer months, allowing visitors to see an exhibition about her and to walk around the lake. All profits made are donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.
During the four weeks following her funeral, the overall suicide rate in England and Wales rose by 17% and cases of deliberate self harm by 44.3%, compared with the average reported for that period in the four previous years. Researchers suggest that this was caused by the "identification" effect, as the greatest increase in suicides was by people most similar to Diana: women aged 25 to 44, whose suicide rate increased by over 45%.[40]
In the years after her death, interest in the life of Diana has remained high. As a temporary memorial, the public co-opted the Flamme de la Liberté (Flame of Liberty), a monument near the Alma Tunnel, and related to the French donation of the Statue of Liberty to the United States. The messages of condolence have since been removed, and its use as a Diana memorial has discontinued, though visitors still leave messages at the site in her memory. A permanent memorial, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain was opened in Hyde Park in London on 6 July 2004.
Diana was ranked third in the 2002 Great Britons poll sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the British public, just above Charles Darwin (4th), William Shakespeare (5th), and Isaac Newton (6th).
In 2003, Marvel Comics announced it was to publish a five-part series entitled Di Another Day (a reference to the James Bond film Die Another Day) featuring a resurrected Diana, Princess of Wales, as a mutant with superpowers, as part of Peter Milligan's satirical X-Statix title. Amidst considerable outcry, the idea was quickly dropped.[41] Heliograph Incorporated produced a roleplaying game, Diana: Warrior Princess by Marcus L. Rowland about a fictionalised version of the twentieth century as it might be seen a thousand years from now. Artist Thomas Demand made a video, Tunnel, in 1999, that featured a trip through a cardboard mock-up of the tunnel in which Diana died.
After her death, the actor Kevin Costner, who had been introduced to the Princess by her former sister-in-law, Sarah, Duchess of York, claimed he had been in negotiations with the divorced Princess to co-star in a sequel to the thriller film The Bodyguard, which starred Costner and Whitney Houston. Buckingham Palace dismissed Costner's claims as unfounded.[42]
Actor George Clooney publicly lambasted several tabloids and paparazzi agencies following Diana's death. A few of the tabloids boycotted Clooney following the outburst, stating that he "owed a fair portion of his celebrity" to the tabloids and photo agencies in question.[43]
Conspiracy theories
Main article: Death of Diana, Princess of Wales conspiracy theories
Although the initial French investigation found that Diana, Princess of Wales, had died as a result of an accident, the conspiracy theories persistently raised by Mohammed al-Fayed and the Daily Express suggested that she was assassinated. In 2004 a special Metropolitan Police inquest team, Operation Paget, headed by the then Commissioner Lord Stevens, was established to investigate the conspiracy theories.A report with the findings of the criminal investigation was published on 14 December 2006. The inquest was closed following the conclusion of the British Inquest into the deaths in April 2008.
2007 inquest
Under English law, an inquest is required in cases of sudden or unexplained death.[44] The inquests into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed opened on 8 January 2007, with Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss acting as Deputy Coroner of the Queen's Household for the Diana inquest and Assistant Deputy Coroner for Surrey in relation to the Fayed inquest. Butler-Sloss originally intended to sit without a jury;[45] this decision was later overturned by the High Court,[46] as well as the jurisdiction of the Coroner of the Queen's Household. On 24 April 2007, Butler-Sloss stepped down, saying she lacked the experience required to deal with an inquest with a jury.[7] The role of Coroner for the inquests was transferred to Lord Justice Scott Baker, who formally took up the role on 11 June as Coroner for Inner West London.On 27 July 2007, Baker, following representations for the lawyers of the interested parties, issued a list of issues likely to be raised at the inquest, many of which had been dealt with in great detail by Operation Paget.
The issues identified were:
The inquests officially began on 2 October 2007 with the swearing of a jury of six women and five men. Lord Justice Scott Baker delivered a lengthy opening statement giving general instructions to the jury and introducing the evidence.[48] The BBC reported that Mohammed Al-Fayed, having earlier reiterated his claim that his son and Diana were murdered by the Royal Family, immediately criticised the opening statement as biased.[49]
- Whether driver error on the part of Henri Paul caused or contributed to the cause of the collision
- Whether Henri Paul's ability to drive was impaired through drink or drugs
- Whether a Fiat Uno or any other vehicle caused or contributed to the collision
- Whether the actions of the Paparazzi caused or contributed to the cause of the collision
- Whether the road/tunnel layout and construction were inherently dangerous and, if so, whether this contributed to the collision
- Whether any bright/flashing lights contributed to or caused the collision and, if so, their source
- Whose decision it was that the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed should leave from the rear entrance to the Ritz and that Henri Paul should drive the vehicle
- Henri Paul's movements between 7 and 10 pm on 30 August 1997
- The explanation for the money in Henri Paul's possession on 30 August 1997 and in his bank account
- Whether Andanson was in Paris on the night of the collision
- Whether Diana's life would have been saved if she had reached hospital sooner or if her medical treatment had been different
- Whether Diana was pregnant
- Whether Diana and Dodi Al Fayed were about to announce their engagement
- Whether and, if so in what circumstances, the Princess of Wales feared for her life
- The circumstances relating to the purchase of the ring
- The circumstances in which Diana's body was embalmed
- Whether the evidence of Tomlinson throws any light on the collision
- Whether the British or any other security services had any involvement in the collision
- Whether there was anything sinister about (i) the Cherruault burglary or (ii) the disturbance at the Big Pictures agency
- Whether correspondence belonging to the Princess of Wales (including some from Prince Philip) has disappeared, and if so the circumstances.[47]
The inquest heard evidence from people connected with Diana and the events leading to her death, including Paul Burrell, Mohamed Al-Fayed, her stepmother, the survivor of the crash, and the former head of MI5.[50]
Lord Justice Scott Baker began his summing up to the jury on 31 March 2008.[51] He stated there was "not a shred of evidence" that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, or that the security services organised it.[52] Lord Justice Scott Baker concluded his summing up on Wednesday, 2 April 2008.[53] After summing up, the jury retired to consider five verdicts, namely unlawful killing by the negligence of either or both the following vehicles or Henri Paul; accidental death or an open verdict.[51] The jury decided on 7 April 2008 that Diana had been unlawfully killed by the grossly negligent driving of chauffeur Henri Paul and following vehicles.[8][54]
The cost of the death inquiry exceeded £12.5 million, with the coroner's inquest at £4.5 million, and a further £8 million spent on the Metropolitan Police investigation. It lasted 6 months and heard 250 witnesses, with the cost heavily criticised in the media.[55]
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